Chapter 42
Chapter forty-two
Lux had at first assumed the vault to be somewhere in the manor’s dark underground corridors. She’d guessed later it was housed in the tower.
She was correct the second time around.
Behind Riselda’s childhood portrait, the hidden passage to the tower was cold with stone on either side and nothing at all to heat the air.
Lux held her hand to a torch as they passed it by just for the fleeting feel of its fire.
Shaw kept pace behind her, Riselda in front, and every time she looked back her nightmare followed, silent to everyone but her.
She gritted her teeth against its relentless voice, ready to scream.
And she waited. She waited until they’d climbed to the very top and stood before the arched, wooden door, Riselda’s heirloom key in its lock. She waited until the lock clicked open. Only then did she push the black-handled dagger into Riselda’s back.
It didn’t pierce the skin, she didn’t think, and aside from stiffening, Riselda neither flinched nor made a sound. Her long-fingered hand held onto the key where it rested, and she said, “So it has come to this again.”
Lux’s nostrils flared, every muscle tensed. The nightmare barraged her, but she wouldn’t be swayed.
“So it has. Self-preservation has always driven you, Riselda, and I know if it comes down to who should emerge from this unscathed, you’ll choose yourself. So tell me—what’s really in the vault? What do you want so badly?”
Riselda laughed, low and lovely. “My darling, you do not understand me so well as you think.” She paused briefly. “But you do understand me better than anyone else alive, I will admit. You waited until I could get you in before you betrayed me. Dare I say I’m impressed?”
“I don’t want to impress you,” seethed Lux.
“Push the dagger. Take back our power. She has siphoned from us long enough!”
Lux flinched, and so did Riselda. She’d nicked her. “I want your answer.”
“The deed to Mothlock’s estate, Lucena.”
“Why? You cannot think to take over this place. It doesn’t need you here. The people nearby don’t need you here.”
“And yet, it shouldn’t be left with this degenerate society, should it? You witnessed the remains of Grimrooks in that garden.”
Lux’s grip softened without meaning. Her memories propelled her backward. To the day Riselda enacted the last portion of her terrible plan in Ghadra.
“You planned for us both not just to come here,” she murmured. “But to stay?”
“It’s ours.”
Lux stamped down the knowledge of their shared blood at once.
No. Don’t think of it. Riselda’s goal could have been far more sinister, and while what Lux had said was true—those near Mothlock’s estate would not thrive with someone like Riselda at its helm—it must be better than the harvests that occurred here now.
Another problem for the future; she was collecting them expeditiously now.
“Go on, then,” said Lux, and stowed away her dagger.
“How kind,” replied Riselda with the barest bite.
The door pushed in.
Unlike the cavernous crypt far below, this high room didn’t flicker to light upon their entering. But there was something lit: A single lamp upon a desk.
And the room was aglow.
With a wide, glass-doored cabinet of lifeblood.
“We’ve found it,” breathed Lux—at the same moment Shaw gripped her around the arm and dragged her behind him.
She didn’t have time to question him or register the large contraption in the center of the circular room, when a new voice croaked, “Intru—”
An axe sank into the soft flesh of the person hunched over the bell pull; they hunched farther before slumping to the floor. A dark stain spread through the attendant’s clothing.
He hadn’t even protested.
“Riselda!” Lux hissed. “You could have knocked him unconscious instead of murdering him.”
“No, Lucena. You’re right. There is something wrong with their life force; we should cull them all.”
Shaw moved toward the body, his fingers pressing to the man’s wrinkled neck and coming away again. He was dead, Lux already knew. Shaw shoved his lids closed.
But she couldn’t help her curiosity. She stepped forward herself, and when her finger pressed to his eye, she searched. “He’s empty,” she said. Her glance strayed around the room.
More ornate cabinets enclosed with glass.
Stacks of blank paper and ink. The contraption in the center, which must have been the printing press, was larger than she’d ever expected.
But what caught her attention longest was the scratched cup and tin plate scattered beside the dead man, empty of all but crumbs. “They kept him up here.”
“And he more than likely managed to pull that rope,” said Shaw. “We need to leave.”
“I will have my deed first.” Riselda spun away from the gruesome scene she’d created and, without bothering to wipe her axe, replaced it within the confines of her cloak. She began pulling open drawers at random.
Shaw’s gaze found Lux’s, and she could see precisely what he thought. She cares for nothing but her own goals.
Lux glanced at the body and immediately regretted having done so. The seeping wound would no longer be contained by any fabric and now puddled on the stone floor. She flung her eyes away. To the pages splayed out beside the machine, the contraption prepared for more.
Her heart told her what it was before she saw it up close.
“Damn them,” she growled when she neared.
The finished pages were lying flat and unbound, her most familiar enchantment on display. The Rise incantation had been printed in uniformed letters—ruined by a depiction of the devil.
One that looked just like her own.
One that looked just like her.
With tortured eyes and a sinister smile, the nightmare wrapped around the detailed illustration of necromantic patterns to be painted, and Lux followed a trail of inked smoke down to a note printed across the bottom of the page.
To guide the dead risks leading an evil darkness home.
Beware those who venture this way.
“Oh, so now the devil found me outside the Beyond all those times and cursed me itself, is that it?”
Of course Mothlock’s tweaked manuscripts would have it declared all her fault. Lux’s teeth ground together. All that talk of dark brilliances. All that talk of madness. They sought to frighten others to bury their gifts or give them up, meanwhile pivoting only for her.
“Ah, at last. I don’t like to confess my faults, but my memory is not what it once was.” With her admission, Riselda dug into a drawer beneath a cabinet. A sharp click, and a drawer within a drawer popped free. She reached inside.
Lux bit down on her tongue when Riselda unrolled the scroll’s copper edges. When she whispered, “The estate is mine.”
Suddenly, Lux’s fury over this vault—over everything in it—transformed into a singular mission.
She pushed past Shaw’s inspection of the wall, beyond the cabinet alight with lifeblood, until she came again to the slain attendant.
To the lamp set beside him. She picked it up, stared awhile into its blue flame, and then she spun and threw it with all her strength.
Straight into the printing press.
“Lucena!”
But Lux could only grin. The freed flame leapt upon the newly printed parchment, the seeping oil dousing the contraption. All of it went up in a flare of fire and sweet smoke.
Riselda twitched when a shattering of glass sounded. Lux didn’t. She watched Shaw stride toward her, The Risen—the original—in his grip. He said, “There’s a second door, a hidden staircase I would guess. It probably shadows the one we came up on.”
“Locked?”
“Not anymore.”
Something wild grew inside her then. She couldn’t explain it at first, hoping it wasn’t hysteria, but as the printing press continued to burn, the manipulated version of her beloved book gone to ash, and Riselda looking on it all with outrage and disgust, she focused instead on Shaw.
The growing fire dragged every bit of gold to the forefront of his eyes. Highlighted the crimson splashed across his chest. Its heat licked her profile, and she knew they needed to leave or be burned along with everything else, but—
“I should tell you that I love you,” she said.
The printing press bowed then crashed into a heap. Sparks leapt and caught at the edges of the room. Riselda squawked in protest, running to the cabinets housing memorabilia of an abandoned life.
Shaw hooked his fingers in the lace of Lux’s collar. She expected him to drag her to him, but he didn’t. He stepped forward instead. Until their chests met, and she was sure she would die both from the contact and the wait for him to speak.
She couldn’t believe she’d found the courage to say it aloud. Finally.
She couldn’t believe—
“I almost told you the day you left.” He stared down at her, and though the fire had turned the color of his eyes into the warmest shade imaginable, the heat from his gaze belonged to something else entirely.
Her lips parted, and he tracked the movement.
“That night in the mayor’s prison, Lux. When I told you—”
“I remember what you said.”
His mouth shifted into a half-smile. “I love you too. I can hardly believe it.”
She smiled to match. Her heart felt full to the brim. It remained so even as she asked, “Do you think we can survive this?”
“The fire or the society?”
“Caring about one another so much.”
More glass cracked and a cabinet splintered.
Shaw bent until his nose just brushed her own and his lips were nearly against hers. “Does it matter?” he murmured.
Lux sucked in a breath full of smoke and him. “No.”
“We need to leave, Lux.”
“You said that already.”
“Except now the entire room is burning.”
“Learned it from you.”
He laughed against her mouth, but she sobered on hearing it. Because she remembered—after the fire came the consequences. Consequences which nearly lost him to her forever.
Lux pulled back and found Riselda busying herself with gathering as many things as she could. Flames sparked all around her. The smoke shifted, and Lux noticed a long crack in the black stone of the wall. A tapestry lay in a crumpled heap at its base, already afire.
Shaw shifted to face it. “It’s through there.” Then he handed The Risen to her.
“I’ll go first,” she replied. “To clear the webs.”
“Thoughtful.” He glanced to Riselda, where another cabinet—the one containing scores of lifeblood—bowed then collapsed to smoldering bits beside her. Silver seeped to fill every groove in the flagstones. “And her?”
Lux sniffed and said nothing. She shoved her shoulder into the door, hardly stumbling when it spun.
She huffed in the dark at its opposite side.
Like the door in the morning room, this one led to a spiral staircase, but one much narrower and far more coated in dust. She didn’t think it’d been used in a very, very long time.
She stepped down and into cobwebs. Grimacing, Lux swiped at them quick, not turning when a flare of light and warmth and smoke met her back. The door swung fully closed a second time, and Shaw held a flaming bit of wood aloft in the passageway.
The remaining webs burned away.
“What would a regular night with you be like, I wonder?” he said.
The passage muffled his voice strangely, and Lux looked up at him. “You making me tea. Sitting in comfortable chairs. You’ll be painting. I’ll be listening to the sea.”
Even saying it aloud had her aching.
But abruptly, she realized there might not be more nights of any kind.
Because they’d reached the base of the hidden staircase.
And there was no door.